


Cathexis

by hitchhikingbabeh



Category: K-pop, NCT (Band)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-30 00:23:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18304478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitchhikingbabeh/pseuds/hitchhikingbabeh
Summary: You and Jaehyun are just bad at being apart.





	Cathexis

> _[w](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F4LPmBiFkoBk&t=ZWU5NzgzY2FhODBjMDFmNjRjMjYxOGYxYjMzNjQ4MWQ0OTFkMmIxNiwzZTA1NzIxMzBmM2Q0OWQ2OGMwYjg4ZTA3ZTczNzY3MDY3ZTRlMzlj)e’ll be alright, please try again_

“Be high with me right now.”

God, this is such a mistake. You shouldn’t have called, you shouldn’t have done this, you shouldn’t have gotten as fucked up as you are, you shouldn’t have let things get so out of hand that it’s come to this. This phone call. This feeling in your chest. The stupid smile on your face.

All he does is laugh on the other side of the line, and you echo the noise, although you know you’ll never sound as velvety smooth as he does, as he always does.

“It’s early,” he says, and you know it is. Hardly past midnight on a Saturday night but you’re in the unforgiving stillness of your apartment, alone and a little cold with scattered thoughts, most of them, unfortunately, involving the person on the other side of the line. Even though you know you shouldn’t, even though you should think of him, too, how burdensome this could be on him.

“Do you have five minutes for me?”

But regret is far from your mind right now. You’ll probably remember to feel it tomorrow, but right now you just want to close your eyes and pretend that he lies next to you with his lips to your ear and you try to imagine it, you try to add clarity and depth and bass to his voice and you’re so fucked up that you nearly manage it.

“I have all the time in the world for you.”

So every time he speaks you get shivers down your spine. You take in a deep breath and he hears it, and you can feel the way his mouth spreads into a smile at the way he knows you look right now: all dolled up and ready for going all out on a busy city filled with opportunities to do wrong, to do right or go left, to do whatever you please.

“You always say that.”

Jaehyun chuckles. “I always mean it.”

“Why do we always do this?”

He lets the question linger, because you both know the answer to it. He breathes in deep in the end, though, and you bite your lip at what you know is about to come out of his mouth. “Because we’re bad at being broken up.”

“I’m trying, you know,” you tell him, lying on your back in your tiny dress and looking up at the ceiling of your bedroom. “I hooked up with someone last night.”

“How did that go?” he doesn’t sound even a little resented, he’s actually interested. He accommodates himself and stretches his legs. He has to give in to your shared reality, he has to hope you find someone that makes you the kind of happy he can’t right now.

“I felt absolutely nothing,” you touch at the exposed skin of your chest absentmindedly, recalling it all with some comtempt. “In the moment it was just the thrill of the night, of how fucked up I was… but I felt nothing. It was the first time I ever felt like that.”

You let a moment pass, and decide to gather some of your guts for what you’re about to say. “Did you ever feel like that?”

Jaehyun laughs again, with more heart this time, and it manages to make your heart race despite the distance, despite the time. “I haven’t had mindless hookups after you.”

“Oh?” this isn’t what you expected to hear, and Jaehyun chuckles because he probably expected you to hear something very different come out of his mouth. But he’s so busy and so overworked, it kind of makes sense.

“I just,” you say before he can say anything, “I miss us so much. Is that bad? I haven’t been high in years and you’re all I can think about. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this but I can’t keep it to myself anymore. I won’t keep it to myself.”

Jaehyun is surprised at the tone of your voice, the way you so carefully speak. Like you’re afraid of what he’ll say, like you’re afraid because you just admitted to something you’d never say sober.

You sigh, not tiredly but rather wistfully. “I don’t want to miss you anymore.”

His chest swells and he feels like his whole torso is being tickled and he smiles because he can’t help it, can’t help but shut his eyes and wish with his whole soul that this weren’t a phone call, that you were laying next to him right now. Maybe he’s sensitive because it’s the top of the morning on his side of the world and he just woke up, but he lays on his side on the bed and presses his phone closer to his ear to see if he can catch the sound of your breathing, if he can picture it, if he can will this all to materialise in the empty space beside him. His heart aches with your every word because it’s a perfect reflection of what he’s felt for the past twelve months when time and circumstance forced a wall between you that is so, so very difficult to break down.

When you laugh it sounds like home, the home he wishes he’d never left but at the same time, the home he knows he might never return to. If your feelings change, if his feelings change… you promised you wouldn’t hold on to each other or hold each other back, you promised you’d let time do with this, whatever kind of relationship it is, what it had to.

You’ve never been the type to do this, call an ex in the middle of the night. No matter how much you missed them you always reminded yourself to protect your heart, and protect theirs, too.

But Jaehyun is different. You knew from the moment you first saw him that night at that rooftop party in Seoul, that pleasant summer breeze caressing his hair and the side of your face when Johnny Suh first introduced you. You remember that night that he was already blazed and tipsy by the time he took you by the hand and chuckled; you could tell because you were in the same state, too. And that’s why you completely ignored the circle of people around you in favour of listening to the music coming from his phone, plugged to tiny but powerful speakers. Eventually, you got to talking, because you started making requests of songs that he already had queued up and the rest of the night was all stolen glances and smiles bitten back.

And you’re reminded of it all as he fumbles around for what you think could be his laptop, and moments later you _[h](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F1eomjy9Xy3M&t=ZWNkMjM5NWJjZGQyNTNiYTU0NmRjODA2ZDQzOWMyNWQ4ZjM2ZjUwMywzNGQwYzhkMWQyYzI4YWU2M2JmOWJkZTk2YmNhMjYxZjMxOWUyZDZk)_ear something so helplessly reminiscent of those weeks that you can’t help but smile, can’t help how you feel small waves of pure unadulterated joy fill your chest.

Six weeks of being apart only when strictly necessary, six weeks of cooking together, singing together, dancing together, getting fucked up at your place and him sneaking off at the crack of dawn to go to practice or to recordings or wherever he needed to go. Six weeks of your shampoo and his t-shirts, six weeks of scented candles and the smell of lavender and musk and white sage, six weeks of scattered clothes and him scolding you for being messy even though you were both too busy to look after the rented one-bedroom at the very edge of the city…

And now you’re on opposite sides of the globe. Separated not because you wanted to separate, but because of a choice you decided to make, a choice for yourselves, for each other, for your future. Because when you really love someone, you let them go, and if they love you back, you’ll come back to each other somehow. And because you really loved him, you let him let you let go. And he let you let him let go.

His future is too large for you to stand in the way. Your future is too large for him to stand in the way. So you decided to move on, separately but in conjunction.

Alone, together… and yet—

“Is it bad that I feel the exact same way?”

* * *


End file.
